Jordan Buckner (00:00)
What does it look like to build a CPG brand when you've already seen both the highs and lows, successes and failures on the journey, and have really developed that mindset of how you want to build a business next? So, my guest today is Kristoffer who's built Good Journey and have amazing products. We'll kind of get into those. And I really want to talk with him today about how he's approaching this company.

With the new mindset kind of grounded in self-awareness, mental health, and long-term stability or sustainability. You know, it's interesting because now we were just talking, Kristoffer has built Good Journey. He's been in this company for five years, which is actually longer than his previous company. and lots of kind of fun, interesting milestones along the way. And you know, also just want to talk through what that's been like and how he's grown up through the business as well. Kristoffer, welcome to the show.

Kristoffer Quiaoit (00:52)
Awesome. Thanks for having me, Jordan.

Jordan Buckner (00:53)
Of course. I was just looking at we originally, as Mira mentioned before, recorded an episode back in 2023. So this is like a fun follow-up to that. If you did not if you missed that episode, you can go back as episode number 144 which is pretty exciting. which you can learn more about kind of the origin story a bit. But for those who don't know, I want to kind of start with Good Journey, just like describe like what the company is and what you're building.

Kristoffer Quiaoit (01:18)
Yeah, so Good Journey, we make decadent low sugar, low carb donuts and cookies. Our purpose is to empower people to be happy and healthy. So not just on the product side, but like how do we as a company stand for this idea of being happy and healthy? Right. So yeah, it's something that kind of stemmed from the last company of going through my own journey of, you know, growing a company, but also being unhappy.

And so how do we take this deliberate purpose and incorporate into who we are as people and then bring it out to our customers and all the people that we work with?

Jordan Buckner (01:54)
I actually love that. So you know, I think what really resonated with me was like Good Journey is for a lot of people who are like going on journeys themselves around food, health, and nutrition and eating well. But then also just that personal, you know, growth mindset of you as a individual and bringing more pretty good into this business than I know the last business was has a l really, really stressful moments to it.

Kristoffer Quiaoit (02:16)
Yeah. No, I mean the last business we're we for those that don't know, we had started a keto cookie company in twenty sixteen, right before keto took off. And we started with six grand and within a year and a half we had grown to over a million dollars in revenue, all e commerce. but we also made some really big we were on Shark Tank.

We also made some really big mistakes along the way is we sent out three hundred grand worth of product that got moldy after we moved to a co man because we thought our cookie dough that we were hand scooping in our kitchen could scale to, you know, a co manufacturer. and yeah, that was a definitely a tough experience. but it wasn't just that, I think back in that company. I think it was accumulation of things because even though we hit these milestones.

I was never happy. I was like, okay, we hit six figures. Great. What's next? You know, and I never really stopped and celebrated what we had accomplished, nor did I celebrate our team members of what they had accomplished. And it was always coming from this place of not being enough. And so then when, you know, everything led down to that three hundred thousand dollars of moldy stuff and then, you know.

having 800K in in debt that we expensive debt that we're paying like 18% on. and then filing bankruptcy, it was kind of like a sign to revisit what I value and who I am as a person. And, you know, I think about the keto cookie days, the Nui days and

I remember always comparing ourselves to another company, comparing ourselves to competitors, comparing ourselves to another company who had raised like $12 million. And we were here bootstrapping. and so it was always out of a place of not being enough. and I had attached my value as a person to the company, like, all right, we're not doing enough, so I am not good enough. And

I did not enjoy that journey as much as I could have. Right. And I think if I did enjoy it, I think we would have probably made some different decisions along the way. And so now going to this Good Journey, it was from, you know, I was very hesitant to start Good Journey because I was like, that was so painful. Why would I do this again? You know. and then I met my co-founder who owns a donut shop, and she's like, why don't we work on low-carb donuts together?

And so I thought really hard about it. And then, you know, we started testing it out. I still had some hesitation. So I, you know, had you know a little bit of my foot on the gas, but a lot of it on the break, because I was afraid to crash it. And but it's been this process of re-evaluat I am. And so I made it very intentional to be like.

All right, how can I be happy along the way? How can we make this a Good Journey? You know, for myself and make it for other people.

Jordan Buckner (05:00)
You're five years into it now. I'm curious to know

how you've even evolved and changed from that initial hesitation, kind of one foot in, one foot out to the business, to now five years in, if there are any journeys or things that have happened along the way that change how you've grown or how you approach and how you're running the business now.

Kristoffer Quiaoit (05:20)
I would say it was a process of reminding myself that wherever the business is is not who I am as a person, or it doesn't determine my value as a human being. And by removing that attachment and really standing in my commitment to empowering people to be happy and healthy, that allowed me to take my foot off the brake.

Right. And so it wasn't about, okay, is this gonna be crashing or not? It's how do we create a sustainable business that continues to serve our mission over and over again every year? And so, you know, we have a mission that that goes out to twenty thirty five, right? It's not about like, can we exit in four years, you know, or can we exit in so many years, which was a conversation that I had in the previous company was like, Can we exit?

You know. And so that's not that we wouldn't exit, but it also is like, you know, it gives us an opportunity to create something sustainable. And so we really focused on that and yeah, removing the attachment. The other thing is like as a CPG founder, we wear so many hats, right? And it at times feels like I'm not doing a good job in all of them. It's you know.

But what I've learned is to surrender and accept. And to surrender

things might not look like how I want it to look like or what I imagined it to look like. But I'm just going to surrender at this moment. Surrender and I'm going to accept where we are. And by doing that, it's allowed me to not hold on to those things, which would prevent me from being creative.

would prevent me from taking some pretty big moves, you know, like going after bigger customers. So essentially helped me get out of the way out of my own way and out of the way of our team by actually surrendering, accepting wherever we are.

Jordan Buckner (07:10)
Yeah, I think that makes a big impact because on one hand, having a grand vision of like growing the company by X amount or a lot or getting to some like fictitious revenue can like definitely create some type of drive, but it's not sustainable most of the time. And like that's what leads to like I don't even call it like burnout, but just like self-

depreciation like on a mental and emotional level that really kind of degrades over time. And so I think that's so important. Have there been any examples of like how that mindset shift has shown up behaviorally in terms of like not taking on certain opportunities or turning down things or saying yes to things that are different that kind of come to mind?

Kristoffer Quiaoit (07:56)
like right now we're still not big enough for Costco.

But we're having conversations to get in there. We're having conversations to get into other clubs right now. because we know that okay, we can get a Co-man here, co-man there, right, and have the supply

be able to service them. And we might temper it, you know, but it didn't it hasn't stopped that conversation of having with the clubs.

Whereas in the past it's like, you know, can we actually do it or execute and what if it fails? but we've been so diligent on on creating integrity in our processes. And like you know, it's a consistent commitment to sticking to our promises and also creating a system that can do that.

that we feel confident. And it also it's, you know, comes down to who we have on the team. Like I have an amazing ops, you know, VP of ops on my team who came from you know, they're doing eight figures a year at a sweetener company. And so I can't do this by myself. So it's a matter of like who can I get, who can I have be part of the team, including the co man's, to carry out this, objective for us.

Jordan Buckner (09:03)
Yeah, I was, you know, so curious about the evolution of like the founder journey because I found that you know, there's kind of d broadly two types of founders. There's founders who are like, I

want to try to do everything myself to like build in and breathe this thing into creation. And then there are some other founders. Sometimes it comes with different life experiences where they're like, all right, I'm just gonna delegate from the beginning. They're either good at finding people who can like operationalize and like do the work. But I was definitely the founder and you know still in many ways where I like doing everything myself. I actually enjoy But it also creates bottlenecks and problems when

it grows beyond my can control and that was a big problem with especially when I was running TeaSquares that was really hard for me to kind of break out of because it was like alright as the company grows, I can't do or even approve everything because then I'm the bottleneck. But

It was hard to kind of set the the right expectations and standards and make sure people follow through on them. And so that's a problem that I've always had and have been like dealing with that. I'm curious if, you know, what type of founder you feel you found yourself to be and and how that's evolved over time.

Kristoffer Quiaoit (10:13)
I would say I

definitely been that, right? That let me control every single part of it. Because at least I know if it fails, it's because it's my fault.

Jordan Buckner (10:22)
Okay.

Kristoffer Quiaoit (10:24)
And we failed a lot of times because it's my fault. and with Good Journey, it's this constant question of am I the bottleneck here? Am I the bottleneck? And

I ask my that myself that almost every day. It's like, am I the bottleneck in this process? And then learning to trust my team to carry it out. And it helps when there are people on the team that know way more than I do and can execute it better. it gets challenging if it's, you know, if they don't have the competency, but it's really about trusting the people on the team and also allowing them to make mistakes. Like if there's a mistake, okay, we made a mistake.

What is the thing we're gonna do next time to prevent it? and so it's a lowing space for mistakes, but I think it started with me internally because I had to have empathy for myself when I make mistakes. Right. When I make mistakes be in the past is I've beaten myself down, like, you know. and so when I have been able to practice self-forgiveness.

It's allowed me to allow myself to forgive other people's mistakes and not make it mean so much. And it's definitely allowed this journey to be a lot more fun because I'm not beating myself up all the time. And there, you know, there are times where I do beat myself up, but I have been practicing so much of learning to forgive myself that it's starting to become like.

muscle memory. And so it comes with repetition. I wouldn't say it just happens overnight, but it's this constant, constant reminding myself to forgive myself. Cause I truly believe if we start internally, it carries out into our leadership. Right. And but I had to learn how to be empathetic with myself before I started to become empathetic with other people.

Jordan Buckner (12:04)
Yeah, I think that's so powerful. you know, one thing that's so instrumental I found of people who have run a business before is that you learn so much about yourself and how you operate, both the good and the bad, and can then use that to structure and form what comes next if you start another business or not. I feel like a lot of people do. One thing that I learned, or a couple of things is like

with TeaSquares because we raised money and we weren't profitable, we were constantly losing money every single month. And by design, because we like raise equity. And so the whole idea is that you're gonna spin that down and eventually at some point that maybe you start making more money than you're losing. but that was like really hard on my mental psyche. Like I never

understood that like my bank account is constantly going down to zero and I have this like ticking time bomb of like okay we're gonna run out the where the company like all these people are gonna be out of jobs right and so that was a lot of pressure and so with the work that I'm doing now I told myself like all right I am going to run a business that's basically like

profitable from day one, like not incredibly profitable, like not making a ton of money, but like, you know, it's going to be sustainable where I don't feel that downward pressure and where it's more like an upward growth curve. other people go through those experiences with like, yeah, I love VC money. Let me raise more. I'm gonna raise like millions of dollars more. But I'm curious like any other mindset changes or like how you're structured the business or your role or how you're hiring people that have changed based on what you learned about yourself.

Kristoffer Quiaoit (13:37)
I think you bring up a great point in terms of you know, having this downward pressure.

There is a shift in mindset where I was running away from something previously. It's like running away from shutting down, running away from and that's just like out of this mindset for you know of like scarcity. And so what I've been practicing is what can I run towards? And it's a different mindset. It's coming from not enough to

there's gonna be more than enough. And that's been a huge mind shift for myself. And it applies to a lot of different things, is like, am I eating because I'm running away from, you know, having a broken down body or being overweight or all that? Or am I working out because I love myself and I want to, you know, continue, you know, playing basketball till I'm like, you know, I'm 60 or 70 years old.

And that's a huge shift. it's a small one, but it's like going from running from to running to. And that's one thing that I've you know practiced. The other thing is how do I build structures for myself to practice these mindset principles? Like, for example, I tell myself to forgive myself, but in my emails, I my sign off is treat yourself kindly. And

It's there to remind other people to do the same, but it's really there for me to remind myself is to treat myself kindly. And so I built structures to put in these principles. And then as a company, we have company core values. and we choose one every quarter that we focus on. This quarter is be kind. and it's be kind to yourself, and being kind to yourself makes it easier to be kind with other people. And

I'm excited for that because that's something that we can focus on is not just to be kind to other people, just you know, but it's it really starts internally because how we are with other people is how we are with ourselves. Right. And yet you can tell like if I am upset, I get really irritated with people, it's probably because something happened where I am upset at myself at the moment. Yeah. And but when I'm like good, I'm good with everybody. And it's

A matter of creating structures personally and also into our company that reinforce these core values. And, you know, with when it comes to working vendors, that they're not it's not about them and us. It's about we're partners and we're trying to accomplish this mission together. Right. Even competitors. Like I look at competitors like, you know what, we're on the same team. You yeah, we might compete for shellspeed, but really

Out there to help make a difference for people in the world. And you are also helping me inspire me to how can I elevate my gain? and so it's more of like coming from this idea of having access to more opportunities. And yeah, so we really work on the structures.

Jordan Buckner (16:23)
Yeah, I love those little tips because you know, I remember people used to say, you know, write your value, your mission statement on like a post-it and like put on your wall behind your desk. But even love the ability of like putting in your email signature because like whether you're like on your phone or you're on the go or something, like you have that constant reminder there every time you communicate with someone, via email and like little things like that

can really make a big difference. And yeah, I think it's so important just for new founders and the the current ones, you know, who have been running their business to align your like personal

mission and reason why with the company itself so you can like find that balance. And for everyone's gonna be a different, right? Like there's some people who are still under mindset of like I wanna make this large change and be as big as possible. And like that's what really drives them. And yeah, at least in this time in their life and like that's what they want to do. there's other people like, you know, where I am now is especially like I want a sustainable business. I don't need you know billion dollar exit. Like would I like the money? Of course. But like I'm not designing a company to do that.

designing it to like be a successful company. And I've actually seen like those are the companies that are most attractive anyway. Like if there's time for an acquisition, like the ones that are like, I don't actually need your money. Right. Like sure, if we had some, we would grow a little bit faster. Maybe do you know 50 million this year instead of 30, sure. Like we can grow faster. Like I don't need it. And they actually have the most leverage for an optionality for how they want to grow their business.

And so I love that mindset shift of like, all right, how do I build for the long time, not necessarily slow on purpose, but the right speed for the business without you know, using a skiing analogy of there's like sticking, you know, leaning out past your skis where you might chip over and fall or like what you can sustain, so that you can build a successful company along the way.

Kristoffer Quiaoit (18:12)
Yeah, 100%. Billing for sustainability. And, you know, you'd mentioned about when you're exiting, if you don't need it, then you have more leverage. Going to the leverage piece, what I what we've our conversation about leverage, because we're still an emerging brand, right? And as an emerging brand, we don't have much like traditional leverage. And so what I've mentioned to our team is like,

Yeah, honestly, the commitment is our leverage. Like our commitment to our customers and to our purpose, is our leverage and people feel it. Like people really feel it and they start to get inspired and like, how can I be part of this? And that's what we focus on is like, you know what, stand in our commitment. Stand in our commitment and things will happen. but yeah,

Let me can I share one more yeah little thing that has made a difference? Is every day we have a team fifteen minute huddle. and so

I'm really good at beating myself up, you know, and finding stuff that's wrong. And so what I've created is every day we in our huddle, we have we start out with wins. We start out with wins and self-acknowledgements. And at first it's very awkward. People are like, what is my win? What am I gonna acknowledge myself for? And they don't look. And so

We put that in place because it gives us the opportunity to practice looking for the wins and acknowledgements because it's so easy to find the problems and we are constantly looking for problems. But it makes it easier to deal with the problems if we acknowledge our wins. And so that's something that we do every single day and every single meeting is start out with wins. And that's made a huge difference for myself and for our team.

Jordan Buckner (19:49)
That is so powerful and I absolutely love that. And bringing that about is so strong. I've also heard of teams who will share like compliments of other people or other team members, you do like team member shout-outs, especially for more like collaborative teams that are working together to hear that.

I love that you like hear from yourself and then also, you know, for companies to have opportunities to hear it from your peers and coworkers and everyone else too. because it helps you feel part of a like part of the team, part of a community beyond just the kind of the everyday work that you're driving towards a purpose together. So absolutely love that. Kristoffer, thanks so much for being on and for sharing just your journey, how you've grown through this entire journey and excited to see where Good Journey goes from here.

Kristoffer Quiaoit (20:31)
Awesome. Thanks, Jordan.